THERE ARE JOBS OUT THERE, INSISTS CONSERVATIVE CHLOE SMITH
A Conservative politician has told fellow MPs that “There are jobs out there,” suggesting that those who are unemployed – including graduates – simply aren’t trying hard enough to secure work.
In spite of gloomy figures released yesterday showing that a third of graduates are stuck in low-skilled roles, Chloe Smith told MPs yesterday:
“Vacancies were up 11,000 in the last three months to January 2012. There are jobs out there.”
She added that jobseekers should “take a very clear look around at the opportunities available.”
*Are you trying your hardest to find work?
Do you believe figures showing that there are thousands of unfilled vacancies out there? What do you think of Chloe Smith’s comments?
There may well be thousands of vacancies, but there are millions of jobseekers. And while the balance of power has perhaps always been tipped in the favour of employers over jobseekers, it is even more pronounced nowadays. Employers know they can be as picky as they like about who they hire because of the extremely competitive environment in the job market (obviously, this isn’t so true for highly skilled or very specific positions). Consequently, they set their standards so high in terms of experience, qualifications and expected performance that many people never even progress past the initial consideration. In which case, one can try and try until steam comes out of one’s ears, but still nothing comes out of it.
I think an extremely useful policy to boost employment would be some sort of curtailing of what constitutes reasonable VS. unreasonable requirements on the part of the employer, particularly in terms of prior experience. For instance, it’s reasonable to require a junior trainee accountant to have Maths skills, but unreasonable to require two years of prior experience. This would ideally allow more people to actually be considered for jobs, and open up the market a bit. Otherwise, people like me (although I won’t be a graduate until next year) who have a degree and a lot of transferrable skills, but no great amounts of experience in a particular field, will just constantly end up being rejected.
She is right. There are jobs out there if you are willing to move and not many othewrs go for those jobs. I graduated in 2010 and have applied for 1100 jobs and have had 49 interviews. The result of all this is that I have now got a part time temp job with Tesco for 3 months.
While I was unemployed, I volunteered with 3 different organisations in total, took on two part-time courses for employability skills, signed up with Remploy to help me with my CV and interview skills, and sent over a thousand job applications. That’s not including all the research and phonecalls, travelling to the few interviews, and dealing with a chronic health condition. I also have a 1st class degree and several years work experience already. It still took me eight months to get off JSA. Anyone who tells me I should have “worked harder” has no idea what they are talking about!!
@Kayla
There are SOME employers – but far too few – that take the approach you’ve recommended. The Police Service, for example, try to be representative of their communities so set their recruitment requirements according to the demands of the job. The Police Service don’t care whether you’ve acquired your high levels of interpersonal skills in a job, in a voluntary role or whatever; and though some PC recruits actually hold PhDs, the minimum educational standard required is that of an able school leaver.
The campaign against unpaid work is the one to focus on now, I believe, because it’s got momentum behind it and is achieving some successes.
That said, unnecessary economic and age related barriers between competent candidates and the jobs they could do well might well be the next major social issue for the UK to tackle.
That said, unnecessary economic and age related barriers between competent candidates and the jobs they could do well might well be the next major social issue for the UK to tackle.
What do you mean CPUK? – positive age discrimination?
@ Derrick
The most I’d hope is for employers and recruitment agencies eventually end the illegal age discrimination that still continues!
I was referring to the unnecessary barriers – so many employers ask for at least 2 years experience in the same / similar job when the jobs themselves could be learnt much more quickly by any motivated, intelligent recruit with adequate life skills.
@Wayne: Unless a part time job and shop work is what you wanted – and I had part-time shop work in the summer after graduating (though after considerably less than 1100 applications!) – surely that shows how bad the climate is that you’re probably still not earning enough to put a roof over your after all that effort?
Someone who was reliant on the state for their rent – no matter how strong a work ethic they had – probably wouldn’t have been able to even consider taking the job you found unless it was approaching 30 hours a week at least (depending on the part of the country), since it would likely otherwise render them homeless.